A lot of them might just be better liars; E.g., here in Iran the gov has managed quite a good marketing, but the reality on the ground makes it clear that the h

A lot of them might just be better liars; E.g., here in Iran the gov has managed quite a good marketing, but the reality on the ground makes it clear that the hospitals have been severely out of capacity, and infection is very widespread. Still most people are so stupid that they trust official stats to be order-of-magnitude accurate (my guess is the official stat is logarithmic) and think our situation is better than, e.g., the USA.